


Astronomical Odds

by Jaelijn



Series: Symmetry of Souls [1]
Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Developing Relationship, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, M/M, PWB, Pre-Way Back, Season/Series 02, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-24
Updated: 2020-05-24
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:14:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24355633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jaelijn/pseuds/Jaelijn
Summary: Avon despised his soulmark – or rather, he despised the fact that he had one. He would not let a biological quirk dictate his choices, would not let anyone lay a claim on him simply because he happened to have a matching mark on the inside of his wrist. Besides, without a central registry of soulmarks, the odds of ever finding his match were astronomical anyway...
Relationships: Kerr Avon/Vila Restal
Series: Symmetry of Souls [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1758451
Comments: 10
Kudos: 27





	Astronomical Odds

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [“as if we were fools by heavenly compulsion”](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4297023) by [x_los](https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_los/pseuds/x_los). 



> This is the first in a series of fics toying with the soulmate trope, all inspired by x_los's excellent A/B experimentation with this very trope. This series doesn't look like it will have much directly in common with the fic that inspired it (aside, obviously, of the central trope), but credit where credit is due: I wouldn't have started writing these without it. 
> 
> So here we go - Avon and Vila deserve a few more trope-y fics, too! ;) 
> 
> Enjoy, and as ever thank you for reading!

Avon despised his soulmark – or rather, he despised the fact that he had one. He would not let a biological quirk dictate his choices, would not let _anyone_ lay a claim on him simply because he happened to have a matching mark on the inside of his wrist.

Soulmarks had become a rarity. They weren’t expedient to the survival of the human race in the early days of the domes, and reproduction for the sole sake of reproducing and maintaining a varied gene pool had watered down the genes that brought out the distinct markings. Many people now had none, and some had indistinct smudges, no more than a random birthmark that might be anything, impossible to match. Of course Avon hadn’t been so lucky – with a family with a background in the colonies, his soulmark was so distinct that it might as well have been a tattoo. It had been mistaken for one, on occasion.

But even if the people of Earth had still retained their clear soulmarks, the odds of finding one’s match would have been astronomical. That had been a fact even before humanity had spread out all over the galaxy. Soulmarks weren’t a matter of Federation record; if a mark was recorded at all, then only as identifying marker alongside other blemishes. There was no database to check for matches.

Even knowing all that, Avon despised the mark and the lack of freedom and choice it represented. His parents had been a matched pair – of course – for all the good it had done them. Avon didn’t know what he would do if Fate decided to ever put his markmate in front of him, but he doubted that it would be a fairy tale reunion in which he suddenly found his perfect match.

He took to wearing close-fitted sleeves, to avoid questions about his “tattoo” – and the inevitable embarrassed stammering that followed when he told the other party that they were staring at his soulmark. It wasn’t a violation, like an uninvited touch, but staring was still inappropriate. He sometimes ran his thumb over the small symbol, skin on skin, when he was alone, and over the sleeve, when he was in public, but generally he tried to ignore the thing. Bad enough that he should have something so fanciful as a stylised antique lock etched permanently into his skin. Still, it was better than the shooting stars that his parents had had – at least not everyone who had spotted Avon’s mark over the years had recognised it for what it was.

He and Anna hadn’t matched, of course. Her mark was clear enough, though she covered it with makeup religiously. He’d brought the subject up, once, after a shower, because he needed to know – needed to know whether her husband was her markmate (he wasn’t) and whether it mattered to her (it didn’t). It didn’t matter to Avon either, of course.

Then, through the whole nightmare of her death, his deportation, the long, tedious months on the _London_ , and finally the _Liberator_ , he barely gave his mark any thought. He stopped touching it, stopped acknowledging it all together. On the _London_ , most of them didn’t take any notice – probably it was taken for a tattoo, not inappropriate for a thief, after all. He’d only caught Blake looking once, in the showers, and Vila staring a time or two. Blake, if he had ever had a soulmark, didn’t remember it, and Avon had known that bothered him. It was hardly a surprise – it was the kind of thing that would worry a hopeless romantic like Blake. And Vila, the professional lock picker, would have recognised what Avon’s mark showed. Neither of them said anything to him, and Avon was resolved to ignore it. It was beyond time he stopped believing in fairy tales, anyway.

He stopped hiding the mark quite so religiously, but a sartorial habit of a lifetime was hard to shake. He no longer thought of it as hiding the mark – but then, he hardly ever thought about the mark anymore at all. When he wasn’t too busy staying alive through Blake’s schemes, he was too busy watching Vila’s clever hands. Avon didn’t let it distract him when they were on a mission, couldn’t afford it, but he enjoyed watching Vila practice in the safety of the _Liberator_. He even swallowed his pride to ask for lessons, because being able to pick a lock seemed a useful skill to have and it gave him an excuse to seek Vila’s company – Vila never seemed to need excuses to hang around him in turn. And when Vila got his courage together and propositioned to him after they’d broken the casino on Freedom City – well, Avon wasn’t complaining about having those hands explore _him_.

He captured Vila’s right hand, kissing each fingertip, reverently pressed a lingering kiss to the palm and then nipped at the wrist. There was a little scar by Vila’s pulse point and Avon poked it with his tongue, grinning when Vila shuddered.

“What’re you doing?”

“Do you think you have an exclusive right to admire hands?”

“Avon.” Vila withdrew his hand, sitting up a little. “Stop a moment.”

Drowsy and content, Avon was reluctant to withdraw, but something of the seriousness in Vila’s tone penetrated. He drew back. “What is it?”

“I thought you knew.”

Avon sat up on the bed, folding his legs under him. This was starting to sound… ominous. “Knew what?”

“Didn’t you read my file? I thought you’d read all our files when we got Orac.” Vila didn’t sound offended – if anything, he sounded puzzled.

“It pays to be informed,” Avon said, keeping his voice deliberately light. “What is this about, Vila? Having second thoughts?”

“No! No, Avon, I don’t want to be with anyone but you, but I thought you _knew_.”

Good mood gone, Avon swung his legs over the edge of the bed, scowling. “If you don’t tell me what I am supposed to have known _now_ , I’m leaving.”

Vila caught him by the wrist, his thumb unerringly brushing over the soulmark. “This.”

“The mark? What about it? Don’t tell me _you_ are one of the people who only want relationships with markmates. We probably have a better chance out here than in the domes, but even if we weren’t criminals on the run, the odds–”

“– are astronomical, yeah, I know. Which is why I had my mark burned off after the Federation first caught me. Because I knew they’d put it in the file and –”

“– if you were caught again, they might use it to identify you. You do show some intelligence on occasion.” Avon really should have done the same thing, but he had been sentimental, after all – or perhaps, as he tried to tell himself, he was simply refusing the mark the power to dictate _any_ of his actions, even having it removed. He could have had it done easily. Plastic surgeons in the Alpha sector didn’t specialise in soulmarks, but they could remove any blemish without so much as leaving a scar. Avon’s gaze dropped down on Vila’s hand clasping his and the wrist with the little scar, realising. “That’s all right. I won’t pay attention to it again, Vila.”

“No – you really didn’t see, did you?” Vila mused. “Or perhaps they didn’t put it in. I thought that was why you said yes – but if you didn’t know then that means…” Vila’s face suddenly exploded in a broad grin.

Entirely at sea, Avon drew back from him, shaking his hand free. He hid his unease behind a scowl. “You’re not making any sense.”

“That means you wanted to be with _me_!” Vila went on, still beaming at him with adoration. Normally, Avon would have found the expression attractive, but at the moment, he felt rather toyed with.

“I thought I’d made that clear,” he said, voice clipped, and rose to his feet. “I think I’d better go.”

“Avon.” Vila’s voice stopped him. “Before I had it burned off, my mark was right there, by the pulse point on the inside of the wrist. Very clear, too; unusual, that, in the Delta sectors, but I liked it. When I became a thief and realised what it was, I liked it even more. Hurt to have it removed, but it was better that way – wasn’t like I’d ever had any chance of meeting my match, eh? Only, Avon, it was a little antique lock, just like–”

“You’re lying,” Avon spat, turning violently away. People had lied to him about his soulmark before, under the false assumption that it would matter to him, that it would make him want to be with them more. It didn’t. The lying, on the other hand, had a profound effect on just how _little_ Avon wanted to be with them. He hadn’t thought _Vila_ would turn out to be one of those people. “I thought I’d made it clear that I don’t care about the mark and all the superstitious nonsense. You should know me better than to try and get some kind of commitment from me by–”

Vila cut across him immediately. “I thought you’d seen the description in my file and that’s when you decided to be with me; only because we were markmates!” he exclaimed. “And I thought, _fine_ , _what does it matter; as long as I get to be with him, I don’t care why_! I thought you _knew_ , or I’d have said something before – it’d have been unfair for me to know and for you not to, but now I’ve screwed it up anyways, haven’t I. You’re going to walk out and that’s it?”

In truth, Avon hadn’t paid much attention to the physical descriptions in the Federation files – he knew what his crewmates looked like, after all. There’d been no reason to look for soulmark information. Just looking at the files was an invasion of privacy already, but it was necessary – any soulmarks or lack thereof wasn’t relevant information. Now he wished he’d taken a closer look. He looked back at Vila’s plaintive face. “You’re serious?”

Vila grinned faintly. “Y’know, I’d answer _never_ , if it were about anything else. I might be a compulsive thief, but I’m not a compulsive liar, Avon. I just thought the whole song and dance about not caring about your soulmark was for show, and that when you found out we matched you wanted me, after all.”

“I _do_ want…” Avon said, despite himself, then paused to dig his thumb into his mark, lying bare under the light sleeve of his sleep wear. “I had no idea.” He’d sworn to himself that he wouldn’t care if his markmate pranced around in front of him – fairy tale compatibility based on a skin blemish was… well, a fairy tale. But he had chosen to be with Vila before he’d known. Surely that made it all right? “I…”

“You’re not going to leave _because_ we match, are you?” Vila asked suddenly, sounding afraid. He came up behind him, into Avon’s personal bubble. “Avon? I want to be with you. I thought you’d only have me because of the mark, because I didn’t dare hope for anything else. _I_ ’d want to be with you even if your mark were something completely different, like one of those cheesy hearts you see sometimes, or the shooting stars.”

A grimace was in Vila’s voice, and Avon suddenly found himself smiling. He turned, practically already in Vila’s embrace, and caught the thief’s hand, pressing a kiss onto the scar. “Appropriate, don’t you think? You always tell us no lock would resist you.”

“Avon?”

“I swore myself I wouldn’t let the mark dictate my actions. I’m certainly not going to let _a match_ stop me from taking what I want.”

Vila grinned. “ _Taking_ , eh?”

“Well, now. We’ve already beaten astronomical odds twice today. We must be doing something right.”

Vila chuckled. “Here’s to astronomical odds, then?” And he leant in for a kiss.


End file.
